Donald Trump's loss in Wisconsin on Tuesday makes a contested Republican National Convention even more likely — and those delegates are leaning toward Ted Cruz despite talk of House Speaker Paul Ryan emerging as the nominee, statistical analyst Nate Silver said Wednesday.

"There are indications that the rank-and-file delegates are into Ted Cruz — and they're the ones who will have votes in Cleveland," said Silver, editor in chief of the FiveThirtyEight column. The convention will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena in July.

In most states, delegates to the national convention are selected separately from presidential candidates. Most states select delegates through conventions that are held on the county, congressional district or state level, he said.

Those delegates would be bound to vote for the candidate who won the state's primary — Trump in South Carolina, for instance — on the first voting ballot at the Cleveland convention, Silver said.

"They could peel off and vote for another candidate after that," he said.

However, "we know that Cruz is likely to do well among delegates chosen through state and local conventions because we've seen that demonstrated quite a few times already," Silver said.

He cited, for instance, such states as Colorado and Wyoming, where Cruz won a large number of delegates at the smaller conventions, and North Dakota, where "Cruz got a highly favorable slate of delegates approved at the state convention on Sunday."

Silver concluded: "We're also learning more and more about who those delegates are now that they're being chosen. They're not members of the Washington 'establishment.'

"Instead, they're mostly grass-roots activists, and many of them want Cruz to be their next president."

Donald Trump's loss in Wisconsin on Tuesday makes a contested Republican National Convention even more likely — and those delegates are leaning toward Ted Cruz despite talk of House Speaker Paul Ryan emerging as the nominee, statistical analyst Nate Silver said Wednesday.